The Wisconsin School of the Air presents Robert S.
Ellerson, extension specialist in
wildlife management and in the wonderful world of nature.
This series of programs designed for in-school
viewing by children in grades 5 through 9 is televised
each Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock by University
of Wisconsin Television.
Now Robert Ellerson and the wonderful world of nature.
Hello boys and girls.
Today we're going to be talking about
a group of animals that I'm sure all of you are familiar with.
Our what native Wisconsin rabbits and hairs.
Last week you may recall we talked about
some of the adaptations of different kinds of animals.
Adaptations which help these animals live in a particular
habitat or environment.
Today we're going to be talking about our native
Wisconsin rabbits and hairs.
These animals are very similar to each other
and here in Wisconsin we have three different kinds
of rabbits and hairs.
They're animals which I'm sure all of you are familiar with.
They're found throughout the state of Wisconsin and as
a matter of fact rabbits are one of my favorite animals
because I've spent quite a number of years studying these
rabbits here at the University.
Rabbits belong to a group of animals known as the
Lagomarks. They are quite similar to rodents and
yet they are different.
The last time I talked about rabbits and hairs as being
different from rodents to a group of school children
I had quite a lot of these children objecting because
they felt that rabbits and hairs really were rodents.
I think possibly that I can show you how rabbits and
hairs differ from rodents today.
Rabbits and hairs as you all know have long ears
and rather short tails and long and long large hind legs.
But more important as far as the scientists are concerned
rabbits have four teeth, four upper incisors and if you come
in close here we'll take a look at the difference between
the skull of a true rodent and the skull of a rabbit.
On this in my hand here I have the skull of a muskrat and
the muskrat is a true rodent and if we look closely we can
see that in the upper jaw there are two very large front
teeth or incisors but just two.
Now if we take a look at the jaw or at the skull of a rabbit we
can see that there actually are four upper incisors.
Notice that there are two very small peg
like incisors here in addition to the two large cutting teeth
or incisors in the upper jaw.
And this is the principal difference between the
true rodents such as the muskrat and the legomorps
or the hairs and rabbits.
Now in Wisconsin as I said before we have three different
kinds of rabbits and hairs.
One rabbit, the cotton tail rabbit
and two hairs, the snowshoe hare or snowshoe rabbit and the
prairie hare or jack rabbit.
And I imagine some of you are wondering what the
difference between a rabbit and a hare is and there
is a very real difference.
The principal difference between these two types of
animals is in the condition of the young when they are born.
Now the rabbits when they produce their young make a
nest and the mother rabbit will dig a hole in the ground,
a kind of a pear shaped hole such as I have drawn here
and this hole will be lined with fur which the mother
rabbit flux from her breast.
And in this fur lined nest the young are born.
The young rabbits are naked and
blind and helpless when they are for first born and
remain in this nest for a period of a week to ten days
before they finally come out.
On the other hand the young of the hairs are born quite fully
developed. They are haired and their eyes are open and
they are usually born right on the surface of the ground
very frequently beneath the fallen tree trunk or some other
sheltered space and the young rabbits and hairs are simply
dropped on the ground with no nest being made for them.
So this is the difference between the
rabbits and the hairs.
Now here in Wisconsin the three rabbits and hairs that
we have live in different habitats or environments.
The cotton tail rabbit which is the first rabbit that we
shall talk about is the common rabbit in Wisconsin.
It is found throughout our state and
if we take a look at a range map of the cotton tail rabbit
in Wisconsin we find that the rabbit is found throughout
the state of Wisconsin.
However it is most abundant in the southern half of our
state and there are certainly a great many rabbits found
in Wisconsin.
It is probably one of the most numerous of
the wild animals in our state.
It is an animal of the bushlands primarily around the edges
of fields and the edges of woods but it is also very
tolerant of human beings.
And frequently we find rabbits right inside cities.
I know that I can look from my office
window and see rabbit tracks on the snow outside of my window
and look right across the yard out into one of the busiest
streets in the city of Madison.
So they do come right in and live in close association
with human beings.
Now the other animal that we're going to be talking
about is the snow shoe hair.
This animal is an animal of the north lands.
It is an animal that is not usually
found in association with human beings.
It is an animal of the forests and swamps.
And if we look at the range map of the snow shoe hair in
Wisconsin we find that the animal is confined almost
entirely to the northern one third of our state.
In all of the United States and in North America the range of
the snow shoe rabbit just barely gets into the northern part of
the state.
Mostly the range of the snow shoe hair is north of
the United States in Canada.
It is an animal of the north lands.
The next animal that we are going to consider is the white
tailed jackrabbit or prairie hare.
And this picture of the prairie hare shows that it is
an animal with very long legs.
And it lives on the open grasslands.
The range of the snow shoe hair or of the
jackrabbit in Wisconsin is confined largely to the western
and southern part of our state.
Now originally there were very very few jackrabbits found
in Wisconsin.
But they are an animal that is increasing
its range in our state.
In 1944 the range of the jackrabbit only extended about
this far in Wisconsin.
And since that time the jackrabbit
has spread throughout this region and through here.
And the reason for this of course is that the jackrabbit
is extending its range into the open farmlands of our state.
As the farmlands are cleared and cultivated more range is
opened up for the jackrabbit and this allows it to
spread throughout the state.
Now let us take a look at some of the skins of these
animals so that we can get a little better idea of the
comparative size and shape of the various rabbits and hairs.
This first animal that we will take a look at is the
cotton tail rabbit.
Some of you might wonder about
the flatness of these skins.
Well again these are study skins and they are purposely
made flat so that they don't take up so much space.
This is the common rabbit in Wisconsin.
The cotton tail rabbit.
It is an animal of the bushlands.
And it is rather fleet of foot but probably not nearly
as fast as the jackrabbit.
It is an animal that weighs about between 2 and 3 pounds.
The next rabbit we want to consider is the snow shoe hair.
This animal is actually, its body is just about the same
size as the cotton tail rabbit.
But notice, and it weighs about the same.
It is about weighs between 2 and 3 pounds.
Notice however the extremely long hind
feet as compared to the hind feet of the cotton tail rabbit.
Notice also that the ears are somewhat longer in the
snow shoe hair than they are in the cotton tail.
That is another character of hairs.
Usually their ears are somewhat longer than rabbits.
Now the third animal is the largest of the three and this
is the jackrabbit.
This animal weighs over twice as much as
the cotton tail and snow shoe.
This particular jackrabbit weighs 7 and a half pounds.
So it is a very good sized animal.
Notice that it has, if too, has very long hind feet which
gives it great speed.
Notice also that it has very long ears.
Now these three animals, these rabbits and hairs are some
of nature's most defenseless creatures.
Because they are prey to practically all
of the predatory animals that are found in our state.
Kiles, foxes, owls, foxes and even man is a predator because
all of these animals are game animals.
And many of them are shot during the hunting seasons.
In fact the cotton tail rabbit is one of the most important
game animals in Wisconsin.
There are over a million of them shot every year by
hunters. Now what is there about these animals which
makes them so successful and allows them to live in this
hostile world that they live in?
The cotton tail rabbit is rather a fast rabbit when he
is first started from his form and he escapes his enemies by
a short burst of speed.
Another way that he is successful is
that he knows very well the landscape in which he lives.
His home range is very small, only a couple of acres in
extent. But he knows every nothing cranny of it and
every safe hiding place.
So that when we frighten the
rabbit he disappears from view almost immediately and
he is very difficult to find again because he has found
another good hiding place.
The snowshoe hare has some very special adaptations which
enable him to live in his particular habitat.
He too is rather fleet of foot and elusive
but he is living in a habitat that is covered with snow
for a good part of the winter.
He has a special adaptation as his name implies.
He is called the snowshoe rabbit and if we
look at his hind feet we can see that these great enormous
hind feet with the large fur sold on the feet enable him to
get around on the surface of the soft snow without sinking
in and floundering about.
Notice how soft and large these hind feet are regular snowshoes.
The name snowshoe hare is a very good name for this
particular animal.
Now another adaptation is that the snowshoe
hare has is that he changes color in the winter time.
And here is a snowshoe hare in his winter coat.
Notice that it is completely
white except for two little dark tips on his ears.
This rabbit changes color in the fall.
His coat turns white and then in the spring of the
year he loses this white coat and again grows his brown coat.
So this is another adaptation which enables him to live
in this snowy climate and of course being white it
is much more difficult for his enemies to see him.
Now the third animal, the jack rabbit lives in the wide open
spaces and his main adaptation for escaping his enemies in
this habitat is his great speed.
These animals are tremendously fast on foot.
They can outrun any dog and they bound off
they scarcely seem to be exerting themselves at all.
Yet each each leaf will carry them from 15 to 20 feet.
And sometimes as we see them bounding across the prairie
we see them making what we sometimes call a spy hop.
As the animal runs across the prairie he makes a
series of long bones like this and suddenly we'll
see him bound up in the air with a great high leaf.
And this is called a spy hop because when the animal
is up at the top of this leaf we can see him turn
his head and look around to see where his pursuers are.
This enables him to get up above the grass and to look about and
see that everything is clear.
So even the jack rabbit living on the prairies has
these special adaptations.
Now one thing that rabbits seldom have to worry about
is food because rabbits are strict vegetarians and can
eat a wide variety of foods.
During the summertime their food, all of these rabbits and
hairs, their food consists mostly of green leafy plants.
In the wintertime however they are what we call browsing
animals. In other words they are animals which live on woody
plants, on the stems, the bark and the twigs of woody plants.
I have some specimens here which I gathered just the
other day to show you what some of the feeding of
these animals looks like.
Here is a piece of sumac which is one of the favorite foods
of the cotton tail rabbit and we can see here that the
rabbit that fed on this piece of sumac was rather fussy.
For he was just simply biting the buds off of the twig.
Notice here and here and back here
he has just nipped a bud off.
Here we see a bud that hasn't been touched, there
wasn't touched by the rabbit.
The feeding habits of these animals very frequently
gets them into difficulty.
Here is another twig of sumac and you can see that the bark
has been completely eaten off of this twig and of course
this stem would be killed by this type of feeding.
Rabbits very frequently damage plants and young orchards.
Here for example is a young crab apple tree that was
repeatedly brawled by rabbits.
In fact this little tree was brawled in
five successive years.
This was the first time back here, this little dead stub
marks the first brawzing.
The tree then grew up here and it was brawled again
the following winter.
Then it grew up to this point and was brawled here.
Last year it grew up to here and was brawled here.
And last summer this was the new growth that came
up to this point and you can see that this too has
been nipped off by rabbits.
You can always tell when rabbits bite off a twig because
they do such a neat clean job of it.
Notice that it is cut off at an angle and just
as slick and clean as it could be cut off with a knife.
Farn seldom bother rabbits and this piece of rose that I
have here shows some of the a rabbit browsing on a rose bush.
Notice that all of these little short twigs have
been clipped off by rabbits.
And rabbits sometimes eat things which we don't ordinarily think
of as being very palatable.
Look here at this little branch of pine.
This is a scotch pine and notice how the rabbits
have nibbled all of the needles off of these twigs.
In fact cut this twig right off.
So rabbits can be very destructive in their feeding
habits particularly when they become very numerous.
Now I hope today boys and girls that you have seen
how very closely related animals can be adapted
to different environments.
And we have seen how our native Wisconsin rabbits and
hairs have been adapted to their particular habitat.
And that's all for today.
So long.
[Music]
Each Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock the Wisconsin School
of the Air presents Robert S.
Ellerson University of Wisconsin Extension Specialist
in Wildlife Management in the wonderful world of nature.
This series of programs is designed for in-school
viewing by children in grades 5 through 9.
Next Monday at 2 our television classroom will again view the
wonderful world of nature and we invite you to join us then.
[Music]